For those of you who haven’t been paying much attention for the last couple of weeks, there’s been a bit of an Instagram stalking thing going on. At least, that’s the story being portrayed. Instagrammer Lauren Bullen has a very large following. She travels the world and documents her adventures. “Diana Alexa” is, apparently, following in her footsteps. Not only visiting the same places, but copying her images almost exactly.

It seems, however, that the whole thing may just be one great big hoax to promote Bullen’s Instagram account. If true, it worked. Bullen’s Instagram account has received almost 220,000 new followers in the last 11 days since the story came out. To travel around the world and reproduce somebody else’s images almost exactly is a little far fetched. Also, prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people. But is it real? Or is the whole thing just a big promotional stunt?

Some cases of plagiarism are the usual copy-the-photo-and-present-as-their-own, but this one found by Pratik Naik and Bella Kotak just tops them all. At the base of the story are Lauren Bullen and Jack Morris two travel photographers and some of Instagram’s power couples, and Instagram’s favorite travel power couple with just over two million followers combined.

Yesterday, Lauren shared one of the weirdest stories I’ve ever seen. An instagramer is not only following the couple, but copying their every photo, down to the smallest details, like wardrobe, hards, composition, even the food. While copying someone’s work is never a good thing to do, the amount of investment needed to copy someone who constantly travels around the world is just unconsibile.

Pratik says it quite right “Ask yourself, what would you do if one of your followers dedicated their entire social media presence into mimicking every minor detail of your work? Now, they follow your footsteps across the globe in order to continue that obsession.”

One of the biggest selling points for more professional cameras is their rigidity. Mag-alloy body vs. Plastics; better weather sealing, and all and all better constructions, but photographer Mike Quain from Arkansas shows that you can pull it off with an entry level Nikon D3300 and a cheap 35mm f/1.8 lens.

Mike (A.K.A The Nikon Kidd) did quite a bit of travel with the camera: A total mileage of 17,803 (9214 miles Hitchhiking, 5,500 miles by van, 1,900 miles by bus, 739 by freight trains and 450 by Amtrak) this camera has been around the block.

Mike did not start travelling with a 2 years photography project in mind, instead, he left his home town (Arkansas) after it was hit badly on the recession, and he was miserable with his night job of stocking shelves at the local Wallmart. The result is a facinating travel story documented on Mike’s Facebook page.

We’ve probably all heard the saying, but what does it mean? Basically ‘take only photos, leave nothing but footprints’ means to make as little impact on an enviornment as possible. As a travel photographer I’m always doing my best to work with humility, respect and a light footprint. It’s not rocket science, but there’s a lot of photographers who either don’t understand it or simply don’t care. This is the wrong attitude, and can spoil it for others who do the right thing. Here are my six tips to inform aspiring travel photographers about how they can move lightly and enjoy their travel photography experience at the same time.

Zeiss have announced a new telephoto lens in their Loxia lineup for Sony full frame cameras. The new lens is the Zeiss Loxia 2.4/85. Adding to the Loxia family that includes the 21mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2 and 50mm f/2, the new 85mm f/2.4 rounds off the selection quite nicely. For now, anyway. I still think they need to add a 105mm.

The new lens has been designed specifically with digital sensors in mind. It’s based on the Zeiss Sonnar design, and has seven elements in seven groups. It also features the aperture “De-Click” function, making it ideal for video use. Zeiss lens gears also allow it to be easily used with a follow focus system on a rail rig. The manual focus ring also turns a full 220°.

Becoming a travel photographer or filmmaker has had a resurgence in the last few years. It’s one of those markets of photography that took a little dip for a while as cameras got into the hands of more people. Suddenly, companies didn’t need to send photographers to far flung corners of the globe any more. It became easy to license photos at microstock sites from those who had already been there on holiday and taken a few good quality snaps.

Now, companies are starting to realise there’s more to it than just showing people what these locations look like. They need to have images that look different to everybody else’s. They need to tell stories to draw prospects in and turn them into clients. This is why Gregg Bleakney founded travel filmmaking agency WhereNext.

For the past six months, I’ve been stuck in endless review holes to find the perfect camera for traveling AND blogging.

The perfect camera has to be light and easy to toss in my bag (unlike my current Nikon D90, which weighs about 2lbs with the lens). Also, the perfect camera can’t compromise quality just because it’s a smaller.

Well, after hours of research, I’ve found the ultimate camera for traveling and blogging– the Olympus PEN E-PL7. Read on to find out why it’s great for both traveling and blogging, or at the very least, scroll down to see some photos!

The purpose of the trip was half family vacation and half extended photoshoot for my portfolio at Stocksy United.

Backcountry canoeing with an eight and ten year old meant that we had to stick to a relatively moderate route – but paddling roughly 60 km in total with 10 km of portages also meant that we had to pack as light and compact as possible.

So when it came to photography gear, I could only bring the essentials – but what camera equipment do you really need to pack for seven days in the woods?

I created the video “WE ARE MIDBURN” because I have always been fascinated by the culture and the people that belong to the Burning Man community. Midburn is a regional Burning man event held over for a period of 5 days in the Israeli desert. After buying my tickets to the most recent MidBurn this past June, I knew that I had to capture the magic of it all on camera. Despite the enchantment of the event, I knew filming it would bring along its share of challenges.

We are starting something new here, a Featured Photographer video series where we talk with famous photographers. Our first installment is a piece by travel photographer Asher Svidensky, who has been published by National Geographic, BBC, Oxford and several others.

Asher travels the world looking for stories. According to Asher, the only way to really get a story is by totally immersing yourself in the surrounding. But with total immersion comes a cost. The more a photographer absorbs, the less of their original self remains.

John Aldred is a portrait and animal photographer in Lancaster, England. you can see some of his work on his website, or find him on Facebook or Twitter.

Stefan Kohler is a conceptual photographer, specialized in mixing science, technology and photography. He is one of the founders of Kamerakind, based in Traunstein, Southern Germany. You can follow him on Facebook or on 500px.com

Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel.

When he isn't waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses.